Blackcurrant Fool (Greenwing & Dart #4) Page 4

  I therefore did a careful survey of the surroundings before doing anything further. The road just here passed through a narrow cleft between two well-thicketed bluffs. Well, I say narrow; Mr. Fancy had taken us along the old highway, which was built in the Empire’s heyday as the main route from Northwest Oriole to the capital, and so even in the ‘narrow’ section there was plenty of room for another horse and rider to pass even the vast bulk of the falarode and its six horses.

  Apart from said six horses jingling their tack a little and a slight brush of wind in the thickets, there was no indication that the Hunter in the Green had brought any of his men with him.

  I returned my attention to him. In the dim twilight he stood foursquare and broad-shouldered. He was holding a quarterstaff with both hands; a short sword was belted at his waist, along with the horn I had last heard belling warning of the Turning of the Waters on the Magarran Strid. His warning had saved several lives besides mine on that occasion.

  Mr. Fancy sat slouched on the bench, reins looped around a stanchion. He was enveloped in a huge black cape and a huge black hat against the coming night’s cold. He held a stripped crossbow steadily, its black-fletched quarrel centred on the Hunter’s torso.

  All this I saw in a quick comprehensive glance, grateful for my father’s lessons both old and new, those of the defense tutor at Morrowlea, and my own strange gift for acting calmly in the face of mortal danger.

  I did not feel more than a slight tug into the calm clear world of mortal danger.

  I had several thoughts in quick succession: one, I had definitely heard a crossbow bolt; two, the Marchioness of the Woods Noirell’s falarode was quite possibly the most distinctive vehicle in the barony; and three, all presentiment of danger was coming from the coachman.

  And four, Mr. Fancy was the one who had insisted we leave at sunset to go through the Arguty Forest, infamous haunt of highwaymen, smugglers, illegal distillers, and the scofflaws of half a continent.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Mr. Fancy, dare I ask why you have waylaid this gentleman of the road?”

  The crossbow never wavered, but after a startled moment the Hunter in Green began to laugh. “Never say you can’t draw a true conclusion from strange evidence!” he cried once he had recovered somewhat. “What makes you think I’m not the one on the wild lay?”

  “I daresay you’ve spent enough time on the wild lay to know not to waylay the extremely distinctive coach-and-six of one of the few openly practicing wizards in the barony without, at the very least, a long-distance weapon.”

  He inclined his head. “Smart lad.”

  “Mr. Fancy?”

  “He’s hardly an honest sort, playing at costume games.”

  “How do you know he’s playing?” I asked, genuinely curious although I did not, myself, believe that this was actually a divinity. Although that was not to say I thought it utterly impossible. I would have liked to believe in logic and reason and rational explanations, but the circumstances of my life did not wholly lend themselves to it.

  Mr. Fancy snarled but did not actually provide me with an explanation, rational or otherwise.

  The Hunter in the Green said carefully, “I had indicated, I admit, that I wished the coach to stop.”

  I thought back to the beginning of the adventure. The Hunter might have said ‘Stand!’ and the coachman, in a snarling sarcasm, retorted with ‘Stand and deliver!’ I shrugged. “Was there a particular reason? You’ve met me already; you know my father; you know that at present I have little of value to deliver.”

  “It was not your belongings I wished delivery of, but rather myself.”

  “Meaning, in this instance? As you do not seem presently incarcerated, for instance. If it is ensorcelment I’m afraid I do not have my grandmother’s skill.“

  He made a broadly dismissive gesture. “No, no, you mistake me. I wish to be delivered—to Yrchester, in point of fact, or as close thereto as possible.”

  I glanced at Mr. Dart, who was grinning happily and nodded firmly in response to the silent question. I looked back at the Hunter. “There seems no objection to that. I feel I ought ask, for the sake of forewarning, whether we should expect any company to be joining us this night?”

  “Not on my account,” replied the Hunter. “I go on business of my own, of no interest to authorities here or there.”

  I very much doubted that, but decided that there wasn’t very much harm in having him join us. Mr. Dart obviously still did not want to talk about his wild magic or newly-acknowledged relatives; though, mind you, on that point I could well sympathize. I did not really want to talk about my father’s return or my slow recuperation from curses and wireweed. And, well, I owed the Hunter in the Green hospitality, from that night in the Forest, and at least a portion of my life.

  “Very well,” I decided, and gestured to the open door. “After you, sir. Mr. Fancy—”

  “I’ve been coachman these forty years and more,” he growled. “Don’t you be telling me my business, lad. I know what to do if we meet the Red Company or their ghosts.”

  Something in the way he said that piqued my curiosity, but it was truly getting dark and I did not particularly want ghost stories to accompany us through the heart of the Forest. “To Yrchester, then.”

  “Aye, if the night holds fair.”

  We made it nearly three-quarters of an hour before the next encounter.

  MR. DART AND THE HUNTER in the Green spent about three minutes in polite discourse before launching into an enthusiastic conversation about various stories and legends to do with the Hunter in Green and the Lady of Summer. Nothing the Hunter said totally precluded him from being the divinity, though nothing precluded him from being an ordinary human being in disguise, either.

  I decided not to worry about the fine theological distinctions Mr. Dart was delving into between “the Hunter in Green” and “in the Green,” and, given said Hunter’s ambivalence about the matter, also not to worry about how I went back and forth between the two appellations in my own mind, and sat back to stare out the window and ponder.

  They were comparing a legend from South Fiellan to its variant from the north when three sharp shrieks, like a grey jay’s alarm call, sounded out from three points around us. I sat bolt upright while Mr. Fancy reined in the horses.

  The Hunter in Green tilted his head, as if listening; three more calls rang out, from three different placements. His gloved hands tightened on the quarterstaff he’d leaned against the corner. Mr. Dart looked at me. In the last light of the evening his face was ghostly pale, though not, I was fairly sure, with fear.

  “You’re blushing again,” he said accusingly, then laughed. “Who’s this, then?”

  “Myrta the Hand’s gang,” I said, “and I’m guessing that this is why Mr. Fancy wanted to come this way at sunset.”

  “How do you come by that?” the Hunter asked.

  I had my hand on the door. “He didn’t spring the horses, and there haven’t been any ... theatrics.”

  “You wound me.”

  “You made a very classic silhouette.”

  “That’s better.”

  I grinned and opened the door, to find a pair of women I knew immediately outside it. I bowed as best I could while half-folded in the doorway. “Ma’am. Red Myrta.”

  “Jemis,” Red Myrta said, sighing extravagantly. “Why is it always you?”

  “Myr,” her mother said warningly, then smiled at me. “It’s good to see you again, Mr. Greenwing. I see your sangfroid has not entirely deserted you.”

  “Is there anything I can do for you this evening?” I asked, deciding to pretend I didn’t know very well that they were very definitely engaged on the wild lay. The distinctiveness of the falarode as a mode of conveyance still held, after all.

  Myrta the Hand regarded me steadily, smiling slightly, then leaned to glance past me. Mr. Dart nodded with a good degree of natural courtesy; the Hunter in (the) Green had one hand up against his face, as if to hide a smile already hidden by his mask, but he lifted the other hand in greeting.

  “This is our second adventure of the night,” I said brightly.

  “And I see that the first left you with an addition, rather than a subtraction.” Myrta the Hand nodded solemnly to Mr. Dart and the Hunter in Green. “I shall follow suit. We have a dozen barrels to be delivered to a safe house east of Yrchester.”

  While I did not normally condone smuggling, I knew well that there were at least four other people from the Whiskeyjack gang around, and most likely many more in the shadows.

  “Is there any information you might convey along with the barrels?” I asked.

  Myrta the Hand considered me a moment, then made a gesture to one of her people. A soft cry was the response, along with the sudden illumination of a dozen lanterns no longer kept to a smuggler’s darkness.

  “The opportunities are not as they were,” she said at last.

  I resolutely refused to let my skin crawl as it wished, and hoped my voice was steady. “Disruption, disaster, delay?”

  “Death,” she said softly, “though whose is not yet named.”

  Well, thanks, I thought, and then, somewhat sardonically, said. Myrta the Hand smiled crookedly. “The waters have turned, but the world has not yet,” she said enigmatically. “All the signs are towards change. In the meantime—travel safely.”

  Ironic words from a highwaywoman. I bowed, not bothering to hide my sentiment, and, seeing that the barrels had been loaded and tied upon the luggage rack with great expediency, withdrew inside the carriage again.

  “You were saying?” Mr. Dart said.

  “Pshaw.”

  IT WAS ONLY AN HOUR later that Mr. Moo of Nibbler’s gang accosted us and foisted upon our unwilling selves half-a-dozen kitte
ns he couldn’t bear to see drowned and was too allergic to keep for himself.

  “Don’t say anything,” I warned.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Mr. Dart replied, rather too brightly for someone who ought to have been asleep these hours since. “It will no doubt greatly assist in your future legal career to be on speaking terms with all the barony’s gentlemen—and women—of the road.”

  Chapter Five

  Yrchester and Surrounds

  EVEN LADEN WITH HALF the Arguty Forest’s contraband, the six black horses trotted smartly into Yrchester town square at an hour after dawn with no hint but their steaming flanks that they’d had a long and much-interrupted night’s travel. Mr. Fancy wheeled them to a halt in front of the post office, a choice of location that seemed brazen in its insouciance, given said contraband.

  I struggled awake out of confusing dreams to find myself with a lap full of kittens and a sound-asleep Hunter in Green snoring against his quarterstaff. I regarded him thoughtfully, petting the tiny kittens absently. They made an extraordinarily loud purring for their size.

  One did not fall asleep so easily in front of enemies. I personally found it hard to fall asleep so easily in front of minor acquaintances, too, and had consequently passed an uncomfortable and mostly sleepless night listening to the kittens and other men breathing. The Hunter slouched, head crammed between corner and staff, feet braced against the seat between me and Mr. Dart. He hadn’t taken off his mask or his gloves or even his hat, and in the dim dawning looked like nothing so much as someone sleeping off a night’s debauchery.

  Mr. Dart was also still asleep, though he’d had the forethought to pad his head with some voluminous garment I didn’t recall seeing earlier. At some point between his obviously dream-troubled earlier sleep and my pre-dawn doze he must have woken up to fetch it out of his bag. I shivered, chilled despite the warmth in my lap, and buried my hands into the small quivering masses. The purring, if anything, increased to a mad frenzy.

  It was at this point I realized we’d halted. I debated waking my companions, then decided that I should perhaps find out from Mr. Fancy what his plans were. We were not nearly well-travelled enough, Mr. Dart and I, to know what the rest and refreshment requirements were for a coach-and-six. I had not even determined whether we would be changing the horses, which was normal for smaller carriages. How expensive would it be to replace six with post-hires?

  And how was I to pay for such things before we reached Orio City? Until I could access what I’d been left out of my stepfather’s will I had only what I’d been paid by Mrs. Etaris for my work at the bookstore, which was hardly enough for more than the travel.

  A faint whiff of coffee decided me. I scooped up each ball of fluff and deposited them in convenient nooks of Mr. Dart’s posture—he had one knee bent against the quarterstaff, supporting his stone arm at the wrist. After a moment’s hesitation, I then nestled the smallest and most absurd kitten, a powderpuff grey, into the crook of the Hunter in Green’s arm. With any luck he’d fall immediately in love and take it off our hands. The midnight accedence to Moo the Bandit’s pleas seemed, in the cold grey light of morning, a great folly indeed. How on earth was I to find homes for half a dozen kittens while travelling between Ragnor Bella and Orio City?

  Coffee, I decided, coffee would help. All things seemed brighter in the morning once coffee was involved.

  Mr. Fancy had already fetched himself a cup and was now leaning up against a post watching the horses investigate their nosebags. I nodded at him and stumbled into the post office, which did not answer my need, and back out again so I could enter the coffeehouse next door. The proprietors of both had been standing in the doorway, watching, I realized when I approached. The woman at the coffeehouse laughed pleasantly at me.

  “Ah, good morning, sir. A cup of coffee, I reckon? Perhaps a sausage roll or two?”

  “One for me and half-a-dozen to go, please.” I thought of the kittens. “Do you have a pint of milk I could buy, as well?”

  Her eyebrows raised as she turned to the coffee maker. “A pint of milk? You’re young to be travelling with a child, sir ... a sister?”

  It was too early in the morning to be the subject of gossip. “No. Kittens. You don’t happen to want a cat, do you?”

  “Good mousers, are they?”

  I covered a yawn. “I expect they’ll be able to hunt the Moon’s rabbits, once they’re full grown.”

  “Not too bad for first thing in the morning,” she said judiciously, passing me a demi-tasse. “Start there, sir. The rolls will be a jiffy.”

  I sipped the coffee and slowly felt my faculties rouse. The last time I had come through Yrchester had been three months ago, on my unwilling but hasty return home to Ragnor Bella after news of my stepfather’s death had finally reached me in Ghilousette. On that occasion I’d been taking the public mail coach and had been called lad by everyone who felt the need to address me, and sir only in jest.

  I leaned against the counter, catching a glimpse of the monstrous black coach. Well, there was the difference. That and the fact that my winter suit was perfectly suitable for a young gentleman of means, better than my travelling clothes had been by that point of the summer. Wear the right clothes and be conveyed by an antique falarode of enormous distinction—one did not need to be beautiful to achieve either note or notice—and one was, by default, assumed to have the substance behind the appearance.

  I wondered how long it would take for me to become resigned to being the Viscount St-Noire and, courtesy of my step-father’s bequest, a man of substance. How considerable a substance was something I needed to determine in Orio City.

  There would be enough, I was fairly confident, for the supplies the villagers of St-Noire needed for the winter. I hoped there would be enough to assist my father with the rebuilding of the Arguty estate. Before Hal had left he had begun organizing the account-books for my father, and although much remained to be seen, it was clear the overall estate was in poor heart. Only my aunt’s involvement with the cult to the Dark Kings and its various enterprises had kept my uncle’s gambling debts and exotic fish collection from utterly ruining him.

  The coffee mistress gave me a warm package of rolls, a bottle of milk, and a roll wrapped in a cotton napkin. “One and six,” she said. I finished the coffee and fished out the change from my pocket. “Thank you, sir,” she said, when I made a gesture for her to keep the change. “Whither do you travel?”

  “East to Orio City,” I replied, figuring that safe enough and a little disconcerted by her correct use of ‘whither’.

  “Then I will say, travel safely,” she said firmly.

  It was really far too early in the morning for gnomic pronouncements. “Is there anything we should look out for?” I hazarded.

  “It’s the grand old highway,” she said, turning to fuss with jars of cookies and confections on the counter behind her. I contemplated the jars thoughtfully, noticing the double B sigil embossed on glass and cork. My stepfather had been a genius at devising containers; each of those jars represented some fraction of a penny of the fortune left to my stepfamily and me.

  “Yes,” I replied evenly, “and in other days I would not have needed to ask the question.”

  She smiled slightly. “You’ve come from the Woods?”

  “Through the Forest and along the River,” I replied without thinking, the words from my mother’s stories.

  “Then I will say to you, beware what the sea brings, and be doubly wary of those who sell what should never be bought.”

  I stood there with my hands full of sausage rolls, rumpled after a night in the coach, wondering abruptly how much kitten fur was sprinkled about my person, and stared at her. “What—” I wasn’t sure at all how to phrase my question. “Can you name it more plainly, ma’am?”

  She gave me a most disappointed glance, like Mrs. Etaris when I was being particularly slow. “Sir, you should know of what I speak, unless I am much mistaken. Now go, there are those who come for coffee who you won’t want seeing what you’ve got tied so openly on your carriage.”

  All that contraband whiskey ... I swallowed an oath, made a deep, grateful bow to her, and took my sausage rolls out to where Mr. Fancy was already readying the horses to leave.